Posts Tagged Ultrasonic
Viewing data logs in Excel format (Siemens LUT 400 Ultrasonic Level Controller)
Posted by danstips in Flow, Level, Level Technology, Level Transmitters, Open Channel Flow, Siemens, Ultrasonic, Ultrasonic Flowmeters on December 21, 2015
Written by: Dan Weise
Siemens’ LUT 400 saves data values and alarm events in text-formatted log files. This note covers how to get the files out of the LUT400 to view them in spreadsheet format using Siemens Log Importer macro for Excel.
The text files are extracted from the LUT400 over a USB cable (mini B type connector). When the USB cable is connected to your PC, the LUT400 appears as a removable drive (circled in red, below)
Why is my clamp-on flowmeter’s flow rate stuck at zero?
Posted by danstips in Configuration, Flow, Flowmeters, Repairs, Service, Siemens, Ultrasonic Flowmeters on August 28, 2012
I was working with a customer to replace a Siemens clamp-on ultrasonic flowmeter after its electronics had been replaced. We followed all the connection and startup instructions, but the flow rate was stuck at 0.00 – no dithering, no hunting, not a single flicker in the low-order digits.
Very strange.
Ultrasonic clamp-on flowmeters can be very sensitive to low flows. But even at no flow with the pump turned off or the line isolated, the digits to the right of the decimal point would dither around zero, showing some very small positive values, some very small negative values. It’s the nature of the beast.
So why were we getting an absolute zero reading? What was going on?
Simatic PDM won’t connect to Siemens MultiRanger or HydroRanger
Posted by danstips in Communications, Configuration, Level, Level Technology, Serial, Siemens, SIMATIC PDM, Troubleshooting, Ultrasonic on May 24, 2012
Sometimes I get lazy and don’t follow my own rules. (Rule #1: Test EVERYTHING!) That one oversight cost me three hours when I could have solved a problem in three minutes. Maybe you can learn from my mistake.
The goof happened at a customer site last week. He had a Siemens MultiRanger 100 ultrasonic level transceiver, and was trying to connect to it via Modbus using Siemens SIMATIC PDM software on his Windows XP laptop PC.
Early on, the Lesman salesman who worked with this customer had connected to the MultiRanger from his laptop using PDM, but only one upload worked successfully. The rest failed. The salesman had lent the customer his “known good” serial cable that he’d used for the successful upload.
Siemens tech support had offered the customer several “Try This/Try That” suggestions, but came to the conclusion that a software program on the customers’ laptop had locked up the laptop’s internal serial port so PDM couldn’t access it. The customer’s IT guy ran a port scan program, but could find on application or service running on COM1. Plus, they’d used the serial port successfully for other connections.
I couldn’t do anything more for the customer over the phone, so I grabbed my serial comms toolkit and headed to the site myself.
My Siemens infrared handheld programmer is missing. What do I do?
Posted by danweise in Communications, Configuration, Level, Service, Siemens on September 14, 2011
Looking for a programmer for your radar level unit, and can only find the ultrasonic version? Need the ultrasonic, but it’s disappeared? Not to worry: You can use either Siemens/Milltronics handheld programmer in a pinch!
Those Siemens handheld programmers are the same size and sorta look alike until you look closely. One is for radar, the other for ultrasonics. What if you can only locate the Wrong One? Read the rest of this entry »
Lesman Tech Tips 